10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less

by Dan Sullivan

By expanding yourself as a context—which involves a great deal of emotional development—you’re enabled to handle the complexity of bigger obstacles and opportunities without being overwhelmed.

10x isn’t about more. It’s about less. Michelangelo understood this clearly. When the Pope asked about the secret of his genius, particularly in regard to the statue of David, Michelangelo explained, “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.” Going 10x is the simplification of your focus down to the core essential. Then you remove everything else.

10x becomes your perceptual filter for everything you do. Everything becomes either 10x or 2x. Anything that’s not 10x doesn’t meet the filter and gets released from your attention.

There are two levels of freedom—surface-level freedom and higher-level freedom. Surface-level freedom is external and more measurable. This is “freedom from”—where you’re freed from ignorance, poverty, and slavery. But there is a more abundant kind of freedom that is internal and qualitative. This is “freedom to”—which is where you take full ownership over your life.

To make a goal effective, you’ve got to test its outer-limits. Push it out as far as you can. Only once you make your goal impossible will you stop operating based on your current assumptions and knowledge. You’ll be open to new ideas, and you’ll entertain different paths that you’ve never considered.

Seemingly impossible or massive goals are highly practical because they immediately separate what works from what won’t, illuminating the few paths that have the greatest efficacy. Small goals are unable to clarify effective pathways because they are too marginal or linear from your current location. This is a fundamental reason why 10x goals and vision are simpler, easier, and more practical than 2x goals.

10x people are easier than 2x people.

2x is working in the business. 10x is working on yourself and working on the business.

Research shows that in order to activate a flow and high-performance state, a given task requires three things: 1) clear and specific goals, 2) immediate feedback, and 3) the challenge is above and outside the current skill-level.

Letting go of the 80 percent isn’t easy, because the 80 percent is your comfort zone. To go 2x, you can keep 80 percent of your comfort zone. You only need to make minor and subtle tip-toe adjustments along the way to go 2x. Letting go of the 80 percent may feel as extreme as literally killing something you love.

The needed supply always follows psychological demand—when the “why” is strong enough, you’ll find the “how.” Dan Sullivan regularly says, “Nothing happens until after you commit.”

“How you do anything is how you do everything.” — ATTRIBUTED TO MARTHA BECK1

The 4 C’s Formula: Commitment Courage Capability Confidence Nothing happens until you commit.

As the prominent and prolific spiritual and emotional teacher and scientist Dr. David Hawkins stated: “The unconscious will allow us to have only what we believe we deserve. If we have a small view of ourselves, then what we deserve is poverty. And our unconscious will see to it that we have that actuality.”21 To make something a new standard, you stop saying yes to the 80 percent—your now 2x identity and standards—that no longer fits. You embrace rejection and learning at the new standard until you reach a place of capability and confidence at the new standard.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

“Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming. It’s easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It’s easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.” — TIM FERRISS22

Shedding your 2x-identity can be difficult, because as people we have the tendency to avoid loss, overvalue what we currently own, and desire to be seen as consistent. Your identity is the story you believe about yourself and the standards you hold for yourself. Defining and choosing your own minimum standards, no matter how seemingly impossible to yourself and others, is fundamental to experiencing a 10x transformation.

A crucial aspect of “wanting what you want” is that you absolutely do not need to justify your desires to anyone. There is no justification of wants. If someone asks why you want something, you don’t need to explain yourself. You simply want it because you want it. That’s why.

Needing is extrinsically motivated, whereas wanting is intrinsically motivated. Needing is security-driven, whereas wanting is freedom-driven. Needing is scarcity-minded, whereas wanting is abundance-minded. Needing is reactive, whereas wanting is creative.

There are two core types of freedom: Freedom from—which is externally escaping from what you don’t want, and is avoidance-motivated. Freedom to—which is internally committing to and courageously choosing what you most want, and is approach-motivated.

Your life’s objective is to develop mastery in and fully express your Unique Ability. There’s nothing more important to master. There’s nothing more important to dedicate yourself to. It’s your work. Your life’s work, and if you don’t do it, no one else will.

You must make a choice here and now: Will you continue living in the “needing” world where you must compete for scarce resources and justify everything you do, or will you embrace the “wanting” world where you freely choose, create, and get what you want? You can only go 10x by embracing a purely wanting approach to life, because 10x isn’t inherently something anyone needs, but only something you can have if you choose the freedom to want and create it. Your Unique Ability is a central and core aspect of who you are, which can only be uncovered and developed by embracing what you most want.

That’s the disturbing part of being in the gap. You’ve technically made progress but you feel worse as a result, because of the framing you’ve placed on that progress—measuring it against what it should be.

Whatever you focus on expands. Whatever you see, you create more of. By focusing on the gains in your life, you’ll begin to feel like you’re always winning. You’ll begin to see and create more gains from every day and every experience. Consequently, you’ll be able to create more gains from every day.

By getting committed to something specific—a chosen fitness function—you become an increasingly specific and unique type of person. You stop seeing, noticing, and paying attention to anything that isn’t relevant to your perceptual filter. Whatever you focus on expands. Whatever you focus on, you create more of. Whatever you focus on, you become.

Who do you want to be a hero to?

Research shows that there are three essential preconditions of being in a flow state: Clear and specific goals. Immediate feedback. The challenge and/or risk of the activity is beyond your current skill or knowledge level.

The first Who you’ll likely want is an administrative assistant of some form to take most of the logistical and procedural tasks off your plate, enabling you to focus where you’re best. Get a Who that organizes and systemizes you, so you can stop having to continually organize yourself. The more dedicated you are to your creativity and craft, the less bandwidth and cognitive load you’ll be able to give to procedural and organizational tasks. Get Whos to happily and successfully handle that stuff for you. Remember, Frank Sinatra didn’t move his own pianos. Neither should you—whatever that means for you.

The final risk of becoming great is not going 10x. If you’re not going 10x, then the best people will not be attracted to working with you. 2x isn’t exciting or motivating to the best Whos. If you go into 2x mode, you’ll be left with a lot of people working with you who simply want a job. They don’t want 10x transformation and growth. They certainly won’t be expanding their role and going above and beyond. They won’t have the trust in you as their leader or emotional commitment to their organization. They won’t go 10x beyond the call of duty. Instead, they’ll do as little as possible.